The reader will likely come away from this book with a list of comments, concerns, rebuttals, and inspired questions, but that is exactly the purpose of such a book. By inviting the reader to criticize the reader's own animal instincts, their ability to be faithful, and their ability to be rational, and then by combining into that conversation the strange issue of art and meaning, the book offers a sense of objectivity to a subjective experience of humanity.
At the end of the day, no person can make precise verdicts from rationality alone about the nature of human experience, and as Frazer observes, there is the intimidating issue of tribal folklore from the whole world over which explains that reality is a religious experience. Humans, evolving their consciousness from their animal instincts, automatically assume that life is a religious endeavor without being told so. This is shown to be true from every primitive world community.
However, the question still must be asked: Does the primacy of religious interpretation automatically invalidate the scientific process and its value? Rather than answer that question or conundrum, Frazer explains that humans obviously have both types of analysis, and some prefer the religious mode, and some prefer the skeptical mode, but in the end, we're all just making sense of a mystical experience of reality that does not explain itself. He turns the reader's attention to the mystery of art, because after all, the way art moves a human emotionally can be seen in both lenses, but by treating the issue both ways, a broader understanding is reached.
